The Safetyfication of Education: Neoliberalism, Psychopolitics and the End of Critical Education

Group Submission Type: Book Launch

Description of Session

In recent decades, ‘safety’ has become a dominant theme in educational debates, a phenomenon that could be described as ‘safetyfication’. This process, reminiscent of what Biesta (2010) calls the ‘learnification of education’, has led to an increasing prevalence of the term ‘safety’ in all aspects of educational life. Expressions like ‘safe spaces’ or ‘safe conversations’ have unwittingly permeated our language when addressing educational issues as varied as road safety at schools, youth mental health issues, the teaching of contentious subjects in the classroom and the exclusion of minoritised students, among others. This new language of safety, while apparently insignificant (even benign), is contributing in implicit, yet powerful ways to reframe crucial political questions in education, such as the aim of education (now, creating safe spaces), the role of teachers (as safety keepers) and expectations about the kind of citizen subjectivities that education should be both encouraging (safe citizens) and dissuading (dangerous citizens). The discourses of safety, however, have been largely unquestioned and their ‘hidden curriculum’ (Apple, 2019) at schools has largely gone unnoticed. In this book, I problematize the discourses of safety and analyse their origins and political implications.
The first part of the book investigates how ‘safety’ became a problem of educational concern in the Anglophone world. This genealogical inquiry was key in understanding the multiple – now entangled – meanings of safety in education and, more importantly, their link with neoliberalism. In this account, I could distinguish between four general phases, which could be broadly summarized as follows: (a) the development of mass education (1850s–1970s), when physical safety became of increasing importance; (b) the neoliberal turn (1970s–1980s), when school violence and child abuse issues came to the forefront; (c) the neoliberal consolidation period (1990s–2000s), when well-being concerns proliferated; and (d) the progressive neoliberal turn (2010s–present), when safety has been associated with social justice claims related to what Nancy Fraser calls the ‘politics of recognition’. In this part of the book, I also explain the theoretical framework of the analysis, which draws upon the work of post-Foucauldian critical sociologists and philosophers, such as Dardot, Laval and Han.
The second part explores safety discourses in the context of New Zealand, a country at the vanguard of ‘Third way’ education policies. This analysis includes an examination of national safety policies in education and an ethnographic study on how four secondary schools promote safe learning environments. This study, funded by the Spencer Foundation, involved 4 educational leaders, 17 teachers and 52 students and collected data through interviews, focus groups, school documents and observations. The findings show that while safety discourses provide an avenue for discontent teachers and students to channel their aspirations of social justice, efforts to create safety at schools often contribute to the depoliticization/psychologization of social issues and the reinforcement of neoliberal logics of mental optimisation and choice.
The last part of the book discusses how the discourses of safety undermine critical and democratic education. The book concludes with a tentative attempt to go beyond ‘merely’ understanding the world to envision possible ways of changing it.

Sub Unit

• Book Launches and Workshops / Book Launch

Chair

• Gustavo E Fischman, Arizona State University

Book Launch Presenter

• Marta Estellés, The University of Waikato